Word of the Week: “Party” Central Committee

Editor’s Note: The Word of the Week comes from China Digital Space’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.

Ai Weiwei holding a grass-mud horse stuffed animal over his crotch. Combining the obscenity “grass-mud horse” and Ai Weiwei’s action (blocking the center of his crotch), this image conveys the meaning, “Fuck you, Party Central Committee!”

If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.

Instead of the character for “Party,” 党 (dǎng), other characters that sound similar are used. These characters, 档, 裆, and 挡, mean “file,” “crotch,” and “to block,” respectively. The real character is not used because netizens feel it is a loaded term, and perhaps also for fear of it attracting online censors.